... is now located at http://blog.kirkpetersen.net, but I can't get the &%@*$ redirect to work properly. So call the neighbors, wake the kids, let everyone know -- please change any bookmarks or links, and sign up for my RSS feed there :)

Friday, October 24, 2008

The full daily stats have not been posted to my Google Analytics "dashboard" yet, but it turns out that doing a customized search for a time period pulls out data that is more current than the dashboard.

The graphic above shows my total traffic for the past week, as of about 5 p.m. today. If the text in the graphic is too small to read, here's a summary: For the seven prior days, my total visitors ranged from a low of 6 (yesterday) to a high of 13. Not 6 thousand -- just 6.

Today, thanks to my BFF Andrew Sullivan, as of 5 p.m. the system was showing 2,906 viewers. Virtually all of those visits came from Sullivan, according to my Feedjit live feed, although a few came from sites that linked to Sullivan's post, such as 3 Quarks, Bloglines and Straight Dope. A bunch came from Google Reader, making me wonder how it could be that someone in Grenole, France could have my RSS feed in their Google Reader. After a few moments I realized that the French visitor in question undoubtedly has SULLIVAN's RSS feed in their Google Reader, and they clicked on the link to me.

If you're still here, welcome, French person!

Saturday Update: Sullivan's post has continued to drive traffic because he has had it featured all day in his "Recent Keepers" list of posts. Google Analytics tells me the two-day total is 4,815 "Absolute Unique Visitors," and that they came from 57 countries or territories. In order of number of visitors, those countries are:

Average number of page views per visit was 1.32, reflecting the fact that 80% of the visitors left the site without looking at another page. My single visitor from El Salvador, however, spent 40 minutes on the site and looked at 15 pages. Gracias, amigo!

Update 11/2: Seven more countries, for a total of 64: Singapore, South Africa, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Egypt, Kenya and Cambodia. More than 5,300 total visitors since Sullivan's post went up. The Catfight page has gotten 6,480 page views, compared with about 2,200 combined page views for every other page for the history of the blog, including the homepage. No return visit as yet from my amigo in El Salvador (or any other Salvadoran).

7 comments:

Good morning, Kirk. I discovered your blog while perusing Andrew Sullivan’s blog this morning. I appreciate finding your commentary and have added you to my bookmarks.

I disagree with your categorization of NRO. Whether the columnists at the Corner or members of the McCain campaign are racist is beside the point. If the NRO supports tactics that incite racist violence, it does not matter whether the NRO supports racist policies. The McCain campaign’s inflammatory rhetoric is dangerous. The NRO has been silent about that rhetoric, beyond criticizing John Lewis.

John Lewis said, “What I am seeing reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history,” explicitly referencing Wallace’s political tactics. Lewis did not say that McCain or Palin supported Wallace’s segregationist policies.

Whether Wallace was a racist or not, he used the politics of anger to his personal advantage. Those tactics ignited violence that raged out of control in the South. The politics of resentment seem to form a leg of the McCain campaign as well. See http://www.slate.com/id/2202429/

Lewis experienced the result of the inflammatory rhetoric of Wallace and other segregationist politicians. He understands that human emotions are easily incited and not so easily suppressed. He also knows such violence happened “just the other day.” I recommend Jan Crawford Greenburg’s blog on the history: http://blogs.abcnews.com/legalities/2008/10/just-the-other.html

Who is worse? Those who incite anger because they share racist sentiments or those who manipulate that anger to gain votes? I know that the NRO does not call out the McCain/Palin campaign for the latter.

carol, thank you for the kind words. We're not going to agree about NRO -- as I've written, I'm a big fan. NRO is more conservative than I am, certainly on social issues, but I find the writing there to be generally thoughtful and well-reasoned, with exceptions, of course.

Perhaps "NRO does not call out" the Republicans for feeding on anger as much as one would like. But it's only natural to focus more on the shortcomings of the other team than on one's own. I don't recall seeing a lot of enthusiasm in the liberal media for denouncing Jeremiah Wright as a racist anti-American demagogue, or Bill Ayers as an unrepentant domestic terrorist.

Kirk -- I agree that we always call out the other team more than our own. Discussing tenuous contacts between a candidate and unsavory characters is certainly great sport -- I enjoy it myself. I don't expect NRO to go after McCain's contacts (Rev Hagee or G Gordon Liddy, who has given instruction on how to kill ATF agents, for example) with the vigor they discuss Rev Wright and Bill Ayers. I call BS, though, when pundits ignore inflammatory rhetoric from the candidates themselves.

Carol, thanks for the thoughtful response. I have a question for you, not in a "gotcha" sense but in the spirit of actually wanting to understand your position.

Could you identify some instances of "inflammatory rhetoric from the candidates themselves"? I have to say, nothing springs to my mind.

Plenty of inflammatory comments from fellow travelers and supporters, of course. But I won't hold Al Franken's Leslie Stahl rape fantasy against you if you don't hold Ann Coulter's reference to John Edwards as a "faggot" against me.

Kirk -- I hold no one accountable for Ann Coulter -- not even my dad. I appreciate getting a similar pass regarding Mr. Franken. The comments I find infammatory are comments from both McCain and Palin about Obama not being "one of us." Palin has said that Obama "is not a man who sees America the way you and I see America." Folks can question the relationship Obama has had with Mr. Ayers, but to say he "pals around with terrorists" based on the established record is a bit much. McCain referring to Obama as "That One" during the debate.

Perhaps I am oversensitive. But as a 50+ white southerner, I know the "polite" way to introduce race into a conversation -- point out the alienness of "the other," the danger, etc. Combined with the failure of the campaign to call out the loonies who are taking up the call, I find it worrisome. I wish I could say I was surprised that some yahoos with guns wanted to kill the black man who thinks he can be president. Unfortunately, I am not surprised at all.

I don't think all Repubs are racist. I do think the Southern Strategy is being played again. Its to the detriment of the country. And I think constantly stoking folks to believe Obabma is unAmerican and scary puts coals on the fire.

Carol, I enjoy talking with you as well, and I thank you for gracing my humble blog with your thoughtful comments.

"That one" (a stupid gaffe I believe was made in a clumsy attempt to be jocular) and references to "the way you and I see America" could just as easily have been said about a white candidate. Obama "pals around with terrorists" is an exaggeration but also has no racial content, and strikes me as an acceptable soundbite version of this longer and more precise statement: "Obama started his political career in the living room of an unrepentant domestic terrorist, and worked closely with Ayers for years on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge."

It's certainly understandable that supporters of President-Not-Quite-Elect Obama are sensitive to racial cues. But everyone is going to need to get used to the idea that criticism of a man who is black -- even harsh criticism -- is not necessarily racist.

There have been people who have gotten way out of line in their opposition to Obama, and there will be more of them if he is President. This would also be the case if Mr. Obama were white. We live in an age when a mainstream publishing house (Knopf) finds it acceptable to publish what the NYT reviewer aptly called a "scummy little book" fantasizing at length about a fictional assassination of George W. Bush.

Racism exists, and slavery is a moral stain on American history. But as Charles Krauthammer documents quite eloquently, the candidate who has repeatedly injected race into the campaign is Barack [middle name redacted, even though he's joked about it himself] Obama.

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